We Can’t Afford to Wait on AI

Hello everyone. Welcome to the 21 Hats podcast. I'm your host, Lauren [music] Feldman. A lot of business owners are taking a wait andsee approach with artificial intelligence. They've heard the hype, but they've also heard about the slop, [music] the hallucinations, and the research suggesting that many AI projects fail to deliver. For plenty of owners, that's reason enough to assume this might be another passing obsession [music] like Y2K, Clubhouse, or the Metaverse, and to sit back until the dust settles. But not these three owners. David C. Barnett, Jackie Russo, and William Vandervan have decided that waiting is the [music] bigger risk. They're taking courses, they're teaching courses, they're building agents, and they're rethinking processes and workflows, all in search of an edge that may not be available forever. [music] And they're already seeing results. In this episode, they share what's actually working so far, including some early experiments that could reduce their reliance on Google Adwords. They also talk candidly about what they won't do with AI, [music] how they sidestep the slop, and why each of them believes this is one of those rare moments when experimentation isn't optional. Even in good times, owning and running a business can be a lonely pursuit. [music] Our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges. In fact, that's the whole idea behind the 21 Hats community, [music] engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insight only another owner can offer. If you're interested in learning more, you can sign up for the Morning Report newsletter, which offers examples every day of owners solving problems and seizing opportunities. Just search [music] the 21 Hats of Morning Report to subscribe. Joining me this week on the podcast are David C. Barnett, who is based in New Brunswick, Canada, and helps [music] people buy and sell businesses. Jackie Russo, CEO of Brand [music] Russo, a marketing agency based in Lafayette, Louisiana, and William Vanderblan, [music] CEO of Vanderblan Search Group, a Houston-based recruiting firm that works with churches and other [music] faith-based organizations. The episode is titled, We Can't Afford [music] to Wait on AI. Welcome Dave, Jackie, and William. It's great to have all of you here. So, all three of you have been exploring AI, and I'm eager to compare [music] notes on what you're trying and what you're learning. I guess I'll start with you, William. Uh, I gather you're in a cohort with other business owners. I think you said in an email that you're drinking from a fire hose. What's uh what's going on? >> Yeah. Um, so I read a book I guess it was about a year ago. A friend of mine who's usually out in front of trends pretty well said, "Hey, there's there is a book and it and I'm like not a coder. I'm not a computer expert, but it's called uh the AIdriven leader." And if people are wanting to figure out where that is, the author's name is Jeff with a G Woods. And I found it really helpful because it's not focused on, you know, robots are going to change your factory. It's more like how do leaders and owners take a role of saying, let's become thought leaders that drive AI so we can go faster rather than just, oh, it's all going to automate and we're in a prequel to the Terminator and everything's going to end pretty soon. And so I read the book and actually listened to the book on Audible and then went and read the book so I could mark it up, which I guess is a thing now with books. You know, I end up on their email list and they figure out they're in Austin. We're in Houston. They're starting a collective of owners and invited me to be a part of that. I paid I paid a lot, but uh >> How much did you pay, William? >> I don't know if he wants that advertising. I was into five figures but uh it's limited to 150 business owners and we're in two groups so it's 75 at a time and it's a lot we do two on sites a year with each other and then we have monthly calls and it's um what are the new things that are happening in AI that relate to your industry you're around people who are trying to adopt and we're all learning together so it's like what are you trying what are you trying what are you trying it's been really helpful to me I think I'm in a constant pendulum swing between this is going to be amazing and we are cooked. [laughter] So, it just depends on what day you catch me uh which mood I'm in. But, uh I I love learning new things. One of the biggest uh pain points that the owners have is okay, I'm on board. I've got some younger people that are on board, but how am I going to do the change management to get people who are still using a legal pad okay with doing things in a new way? And I I I I'm just not much help there because my people are a year and a half ago I said next year 2025 every department needs to show me every quarter something new they're doing with AI and you don't have to be uniform about it. You can use whatever you want. You're probably going to get approved for any expense you submit within reason. Just go start using it. And so 26 is the year of saying, okay, we're all sort of in this swim together. Now, how do we start to think about a more cohesive set of tools and strategies where we're all sort of working from the same framework, which of course is changing every day. So that's way too much babbling, but you can tell I've been drinking from a fire hose. >> You said sometimes you're feeling like you're cooked. Sometimes you're feeling really excited about where this is going. Tell us about both of those. First, what are you thinking when you're worried you might be cooked? that doesn't last really long. Uh it doesn't. And you know, everybody on this of the panelists know my wife's battling stage four cancer. And one of the interesting things that happens when you're going through that as a family is uh you will have days where you go down the hole of despair. And you know, their counselors will say, "You're going to go down there. What if she dies tomorrow? What about the kids? What about what about what about?" And there there's a level of of saying, "Well, if that happens, then I need to plan for this." There's a part where you have to feel the grieving, but at the end of the day, well, okay, so what? She died. And that's horrible, but like there's nothing to do to fix it. And that that sounds super simplistic, but if we really are cooked, if we really are in a prequel to the Terminator, what difference does it make what we do between now and then? Not much. >> So, when you said that you feel like you might be cooked, were you talking about society as a whole or your business in particular? >> Yes. >> Yes. Society as a whole. society as a whole. >> Okay. Last question for you and then we're going to move on. What What's your goal in doing this? Why are you taking the course? Why are you investing so much time? What are you hoping to get? >> Yeah. Well, I I tell people, you know, whether it's the scriptures from the Jewish faith or the Christian faith, you know, there's there's a problem in the Garden of Eden with an apple, right? And if you if I'd have been there and God had said, "Don't touch the apple, that'd have been fine. But if he said, "Now don't touch the latest product from Apple," I'd have been done. You know, [laughter] like I'm like a, you know, tech geek. I love the new I had a Newton back when that was a thing. I had the Palm Pilot when that was a thing. Like now all your younger listeners are dropping off by the second. But that's part of it is I am the the target audience for this kind of thing. U but underneath that, our biggest growth as a company historically is when we try something new just before everyone else does. It was true with social media. It It's been true with HubSpot. It's been true with blogging. And this feels to me like either the biggest head fake ever, which I don't think it is. Like it could just be nothing and we're all making like Y2K, remember that whole fiasco? [laughter] >> Uh it could be that. I doubt it. Uh or I think the other possibility is it's going to make the Renaissance look kind of like a non-event. And uh if that's about to happen, I want to be out in front of it as a tech junkie and as a company that does things well when we get out in front of each other. If you want to know why we're doing it, we've decided as a leadership team, uh we get paid for human discernment and AI frees us up to have time to do more discerning. >> Exactly. >> That's our that's our mantra companywide. So, um I have a little bit of advantage. Our market is, you know, churches, faith-based schools, faith-based nonprofits, faith-based for-profits. They're generally not the first to market with new ideas. Usually I can just watch what's happening in the business world and sort of adopt it a few years later and we're ahead over the curve for our clients, but uh this time it feels a little more pressing. >> Jackie, you've talked here uh in the past about the uh course you took with Alan Pence, who's been on this podcast. uh you came out of it with um agents set up that I believe were producing 10 client leads for you every morning and at the time you told us about it you'd already gotten two new uh clients uh as a result of that. Uh what's happened since then? How's that going? >> That is still happening and we are still going through our leads. you know, I'm the I was the guinea pig test case and that's now expanded to everyone else on the team that has anything to do with new business. >> So, they're all getting 10 leads a day and pursuing them. >> Correct. >> Wow. >> Yeah. Now, these are we're about quality over quantity. You know, a great year for us is six new clients. I mean, we're not looking to gain a client a week. That's not our thing. We're high touch, high value. And so we are very um careful with vetting someone before they even get into our system. And so these are very wellvetted uh multiple uh ranges of Bant scores and criteria that they go through before they become one of the 10. And then once they become one of the 10, they are again going through filters and outreach contacted. So I'm not looking for quantity. It could be a hundred a day if I was looking for quantity. It could be 10,000 a day. 10 a day is plenty because we're busy taking care of our current clients. Discernment is the word that I use too to William's point. And I think that is the value that we bring. Sure, I teach AI for marketing classes. Yes, I firmly believe AI makes us better in so many different ways. And as it was so eloquently stated, it gives us time for the human things because the human things are where we really excel. If I could get the AI to do the dishes, that'd be a whole other layer of human time I would get back, which would be awesome. But but my AI doesn't stand and walk and load a dishwasher yet. But so much like all the rest of us, I've taken classes for years now. Allan's class was another in that series and every time I learn more and it gets better and able to use more. The teaching that I do around AI is strictly around marketing. Uh because people still don't understand personalization. They don't understand capturing voice. They don't realize how necessary it is to use different tools for different executions. There's no oneizefits-all. And so I think that still means there's a place for humans to be involved. And sure, I could guess that 10 years from now, you know, everything will be done by AI, but I'm interested to see how AI is going to come to my house and fix my AC unit. You know, it's like I think there's some jobs that are safe for a while. >> Yes. But yes, but uh Jackie, we we were touring Adrian's primary cancer doctor's lab. I don't know a couple weeks ago. We're going to raise some money to help him extend his research, which is a whole another thing. But, uh he has this amazing, I'll call it a camera or microscope that you can put all these tissue samples into and see all this genetic sequencing. It's amaz There only five of them at MD Anderson and he has one of them in his lab and so he was showing it off to us which is amazing and his texts who are wicked smart uh couldn't figure out how to open it and I took a picture of it and asked Gigi my AI assistant to tell me how to open it and then we opened it. >> Sure. >> So your AC is your AC is it not as far off as you think? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And so the human still has to be the one who opens it. And so that's to me the collaboration. That's where the beauty comes from. >> So Jackie, when you walked out of Allen's course with those agents that were producing leads for you, I know you got help from Allen to to create that. Since then, you've set the same thing up for the rest of your team. Is that something that you are capable of doing yourself? Are you setting up agents and having them uh vet leads and deliver them first thing in the morning? I have done it. I don't think that my uh work is as clean as it is by other professionals who you know I think there's programming mindsets and I think that the people who are working in codeex and inad that are doing really amazing work they think like programmers. I have started to um get more into using a voice dictation uh that I it's called whisper where I talk through exactly what I want to create and then I let it go create the code and it go build itself. That's magical. That's the stuff where I think u the real good is happening because I don't think like a programmer. That's not how I'm wired. And when I can just tell it what I want to accomplish and then it can go build the program, that's magic. >> Well, that's the whole point of Claude code. Uh, >> correct. That's where I do it. >> And that's actually [clears throat] what I'm working on now in uh in Allen's second cohort. So, you don't have to think like a programmer. You just have to know what you want. >> Yeah. >> But three years ago, moving on four, I went to a thing. It's called Prais. It's basically a a shark tank for Christian entrepreneurs. That's the easy way to say it. And they had the Shark Tank park at night and breakouts during the day. So, this was three and a half years ago. Like, think back that far if you can about AI. And they had one breakout and the breakout was titled, "So, what do we title this?" Which is a brilliant title for an AI breakout. Um, but uh I went and it was all coders. They only let 50 people in there. I was one. So, it was 49 coders and me. and they asked all their Python and backend and blah blah blah things I don't even know you I'm not using the words right and I just sat there and at the end of the session it was a woman and at the time she was in charge of pretty much all the AI initiatives for Google she looked at me and said you haven't said a word do you have a question for us and I'm not a coder so I just said I have a high school senior what should I tell him not to major in in college and everybody got real quiet real fast and they never answered the question but all Three of the people on the panel, which were equal heavyweights, said liberal arts is what he ought to do. And the coders in the room deflated pretty quickly. It's like, you know, the whole STEM thing like that is probably moving toward automation, the ability to be well-versed and talk to other humans and offer discernment and critical thinking. That's what you got to focus on. So, it's really interesting to think about as I'm putting kids through college. You know, I got a good friend whose kid just graduated with computer science degree and can't get a job. >> Yeah. >> All right, Dave, your turn. I gather you have actually started a business based on AI. >> Well, [clears throat] I have I guess I guess it could be a business one day, but um you know, I was using AI to to do a lot of analysis of things going on in my business. And one of the things I've been noticing is that for our appraisal service, which is more of a regional business around me, the results that we've been getting out of the Google Adwords, has really been going down over the last year. And so I started to daydream about different ways that I might be able to get more bang for my marketing buck. And the people that I want to reach through my messaging are business owners or business people, centers of influence like bankers, lawyers, accountants, etc. generally people who have an interest in business. And so I went looking for a media that I could advertise it, some kind of business, you know, journal, podcast, website, something or other. And I really struggled to find just the right sort of thing. Then I realized, hey, why don't I just create the thing that would be the right medium for me to advertise in. >> Were you looking to reach people in a specific geographic area? >> Yeah. Yeah. In in Atlantic Canada. So, I was able to register the domain Atlantic Canada business.news. And so, I've we now have AI agents that scrape the internet looking for news related articles for this region. And I've got a guy named Peter who has had a long career in journalism. And he decides which stories are fitting and he, you know, collates the ones he wants and he uses AI to create a script and he records it every week. And so the whole idea is it's a a brief 15minute news headline kind of program just for this region for for business people in this part of Canada. And hopefully it's going to grow an audience of the people I'm trying to reach because my company is the sponsor of the show and we're doing it all including paying Peter for far less than I was putting into Google Adwords which were having a a you know declining result over the course of time. So, you know, I I say it could be a business one day because if it ever did really grow a big audience, I could always sell advertisements to other people. It could become a profit center of its own. But right now, if it just grows an audience and ends up bringing us business and the costs don't increase while the audience increases, then I think it will be a worthwhile experiment or endeavor for us. >> How are you spreading the word? How are you trying to uh attract listeners? >> We're trying to leverage my the current social media presence that we have. So my own LinkedIn for example where I'm connected to a lot of business people in this region. Um you know I I have an email list which is people all over North America mostly. But you know I went sent an email out to them today telling them about what I was trying to do with this project and how it works for my business and maybe they could look at something like that too. But if they were interested, you know, here's how you go and find it online. And it's available on, you know, YouTube, LinkedIn, all the popular podcasting apps. So, I'm hoping that just the name um will also help it be discoverable for people that are in the region and are looking for that kind of content. But this is just the the most recent of the long series of things that we've been implementing AI into here. Like it I I was trying to make a list for you, Lauren, getting ready for today. You know that I mentioned before that I've created a strategic advisor project in Chad GPT. I also read the Jeff Woods book. It gave me a lot of great ideas. We initially started using AI to help us with, you know, marketing content stuff. I've found that AI is really poor at writing stuff, but it's really great at summarizing or handling or creating outputs from good inputs. And so what we've been having great success with is is having it use transcripts of old videos that I've made and have it turned into like a case study. It seems to do a really good job at that sort of thing. So, we're we're repurposing old content with it. And then we started to do enhancements to some of our online learning programs. So, you know, we have uh upgraded one of our our our business buyer offerings. It's called business buyer advantage. And we've now included several GPTs in that program which actually execute some of the things that we teach people how to do. So, it's for example, uh there's a due diligence GPT in there. Tell us what a GPT is for anybody who's >> It's like a programmed chat GPT thing. So if you click the link, it will open up a chat GPT window, but it's been programmed for specific tasks. So what this due diligence GPT does, for example, is you put in the name and address of any real world business. It will go and do research on that business and and go look for customer reviews and and all kinds of stuff. But then using the industry and the type of business, it will then create a custom due diligence checklist of things that a buyer should be looking for to examine that business. And what is driving it is this exhaustive like 300 item due diligence checklist that I used to give to people. I used to say, "Here's a a general due diligence checklist." But now, what the GPT is able to do is it's able to customize the output so that it's asking for things that specifically relate to that business and to the specific geography or or you know, state, county, etc. that the business is in. So, those have gotten a lot of really great feedback. In in our consulting business, we do a lot of research on the businesses we've been hired to analyze and we traditionally were going to a lot of different websites and downloading things and looking up statistics on government, you know, websites and stuff like that. And now we've we've automated all of that with again with another GPT that we built. And so now I just go in and I say, "Here's the business." And it goes and it goes to all these places that we programmed it to go to. And it collates it together in a standardized format report that is now easier for us to use because it's always laid out the same way every time because it's based upon sample templates that we programmed it with. >> Wait, wait, let me stop you there for a second. Uh Dave, I think I heard you say that you used to hand out a list of 300 things that people need to check and due diligence and now you've created this GPT that does it automatically and does it specifically about a a company in in question. Is the GPT reporting back to you or are you turning the keys over to somebody else to use it? >> No, no, no. The the user is using it themselves. >> Well, how do you charge for that? >> We used to just give them the list. So, we used to say, "Here's, you know, a complete due diligence checklist of things that might apply to your situation. You should," what I used to tell them is I used to say, "Go through the list, pick out the things, you know, cross off the things you know don't apply, and then get feedback from your attorney and your accountant on things that they might want to add to the list." And so now what happens is they get a much more concise list to begin with, and the GPT outputs the list for them. and um and then says to them like you should run this by your CPA and your attorney to see if they want to add other things to this due diligence checklist. But it's it's about trying to make things easier, more expedient. Right. >> I interrupted you. I think you were going to give us another example. >> Well, the latest thing that we've started is when we do the consulting projects, like when somebody hires us to do an analysis of a business that they're going to buy, um we do the research on the business. We take the financial statements. We go through a normalization process. We have a lot of Excel models that we built over the course of time that help us do these analyses. And when we're finished with it, we meet with the business owner and we do a Zoom call. We walk through our findings. We walk through the spreadsheets. We show them, you know, the results of our analysis and what we think are fair offers for that business, what we think are, you know, red flags, things to look out for, that kind of thing. And the the call is recorded so that when it's finished, we can deliver back to the customer a copy of that spreadsheet, a copy of those reports we used with the with the research, the copy of the transcript, but we're now also delivering a a GPT. It's a post delivery analysis GPT where the the customer can then upload if they choose the transcript of our call, the spreadsheet and the industry reports and then they can query the GPT and ask further questions after our debriefing has happened. And so it's it's like a postd delivery support to again, you know, help deliver more value to the client. In our weekly meetings, we actually have an agenda item and and I know William, you said that you're looking for your people to come up with new ideas every quarter for AI, but in our weekly meeting, we have a topic called this week I used AI for this new thing. And not every week people come up with something, but but we try like we're we're trying to question everything. You know, at one point when we were when we work with sellers, we do evaluations called the most probable selling price evaluation. And what we were doing a year ago is we were sending people a 120 question questionnaire. And sometimes we would be able to go through it and delete questions we knew didn't apply to them. But business owners hated it. They absolutely hated it because it was like schoolwork, right? And some people would get it filled in right away and we'd be able to proceed. Other people it would take forever and then they'd get it to us and it would be incomplete, etc. So, what we're doing now is we now have a fourpage questionnaire. It's only got 40 questions and all 40 of those questions are questions that every business owner would know the answer to off the top of their head. Like, what is your website? How many employees do you have? Where are you located? What is your industry? You know, what are your terms of sale with your customers? Do you ask for a deposit? Like just stuff like that people know off the top of their head. And so we ask for that quick, we call it a quick intake now. We ask them to fill that in. It comes in and then we get a GPT to use that information, compare it with the old 120 questionnaire we used to do, and then it creates a much reduced interview questionnaire. And so now we meet with them on Zoom and we have a conversation with them about the the outstanding questions. And at the end of those meetings, we're we're now being left with sometimes we have like three or four, you know, real data items that we need to get, you know, like, okay, we need you to get your W TWS for these years kind of thing. And so it's a very specific short list of uh of data they have to get to us for us to be able to move forward. and we're getting it back much quicker. The whole experience is much more pleasant for the entrepreneur that we're working with. We're we're really reducing the delivery times on the whole process. And it's because of that GPT and and of course we record those interviews so that I can feed the transcript back into a project that we have set up that helps us move through that data in answering our questions as we process the file. So what what we've been trying to do is literally, you know, we we mapped out the process for all of our standard consulting packages that we do. And what we've done is we've gone each step and we've tried to figure out how could we do this better? How can we make it more pleasant? How could we make it more efficient? And it's it's all these AI tools. So Jackie, I want to ask you uh Dave's first example was uh a marketing related example where he realized that Google Adwords was no longer producing. So he created his own DIY marketing service to try to attract uh potential clients in a different way. He could have gone to a marketing agency, but he didn't. Uh how concerning is that to you? >> Not at all. uh agencies have always been a part of the mix, but unlike the laws that require you to hire an architect for blueprints or a licensed attorney for your legal work, you know, we're not the end all beall for everyone. And I'm okay with that. There's a very low barrier to entry. If you have a Apple product, you're a marketer. [laughter] It's about that hard these days. So we shine and I think most agencies do when there is a client who doesn't have the time, inclination, interest or wherewithal to do it themselves. The people that want to do it themselves, I say more power to you. Learn it on your own. I'll teach you. I mean, I have an entire company that just teaches people how to do their own marketing. But for the people who want a real custom experience, they want that discernment, they want talent because, you know, to fix a piece, my social media is now better, my digital advertising is now better. That's great. I still see the success coming from a 360 view, 365day proactive strategic plan that unites all the different pieces. And that's not for everybody, but for the people that it is for, they're going to find it to be very successful for them. One of you said that you don't think AI is very good at writing. Who was that? >> Oh, it wasn't me. I think it's great now. >> It was me. Um, you know, and and I I write um a daily email to my email list, and it's uh it's it's something I look forward to. I really enjoy doing it. I actually spend Friday mornings doing my emails for the week. And I did an experiment over a couple of weeks where I tried to program a a project to use my old emails to write for me and it just it wasn't me, you know, like and so the u engagement actually started to trail off and then when I started to do it again myself, things picked back up. Now, that could be that I'm not maybe as good at programming that kind of thing, but I I found that there was something lacking there um in the way that it was creating the emails. >> I found it really useful. I don't just ask it to write things. And I think if you do just ask it to write something, you're likely to be disappointed. But if you work with it and go back and forth, that's where I get value. Sounds like Jackie, you you like it. William, do you think uh it's useful for producing decent writing? Not that's externally facing internally facing is fine. >> You don't use it at all for external facing. Not even to >> no maybe a little bit like when we do a search we'll do the you know job specs and there's about living in Princeton, New Jersey section. You know that kind of stuff that is kind of a pain in the butt to write but people can go look it up anywhere. Um that's fine. And the reality is I can write it or not. They're gonna chat GPT about Princeton, New Jersey one way or the other. I I do know this. If I read the new if I do Google News in the morning, which I do after my morning routine, I can tell when AI's written it and it doesn't take long. It's just not quite there. >> Yeah, there's some humanity not coming through, some feelings. >> It's all clickbait. They use all the superlative adjectives for everything. And it just I can read it and say this is slob and u I was in the consortium two weeks ago in Austin and we had experts come in to talk to us about what their tools doing with this tool that tool. We even talked to a headmaster of a school where all of the content is delivered through AI every piece of it. Interesting. But uh during that time we had all this highly technical stuff with the panel and then we had rapid fire questions got to answer on the spot. Uh, and one of them was 10 years from now, will the internet be more fun to read or all AI slop? And every one of the panelists said AI slop. It's just sloppy. And uh, I have not found that it carries the humanness that our clients are looking for. But internally facing, I'll use Notebook LM. We do a search, we, you know, record everything. It collates everything. It makes it into a podcast that our consulting team can listen to about the highs and lows and stress points so they can all chip in and help with the search that internally facing if everybody knows AI is producing it and then kind of look past the sort of fakeness of it. It's very very helpful. >> I got to tell you, you know, I've spent most of my career as a writer and an editor and I feel like I mostly know what I'm doing. While I agree with you 100% that I can recognize the slop when it's slop, I find it really helpful in almost anything I write, whether it's internal or external. And you know, I don't go to it and say, "Here, you know, write an article or a post about this." I usually create a draft first or I give it very significant inputs >> and then I go back and forth with it. You know, especially over something like a headline or a title. Um, you know, I treat it like a colleague. Bounce ideas back and forth. And, uh, I, you know, believe me, I hate to say this, it often comes up with a word choice that I didn't think of that's better. It comes up with a structure that connects dots that I didn't think to connect. It makes me a better writer and a better editor. >> Well, I So, I'll stand corrected, Lauren. Titling, it's phenomenal at just good. Not if you just take their first response. Um, >> no. And not if you don't provide context. I mean, context is everything in all caps. >> So, y'all are generalizing AI and I want to be more specific if I can. Yeah. >> Which platforms do you think are bad writers slashgood writers or better writers? >> Uh, well, so for starters, thank you. Um, I read another book that was really helpful. I don't know if you've read AI snake oil. really interesting title. AI probably came up with it, but uh you know what's real, what's not. And the first thing it says is let's not talk about AI as a whole. They're all different. There's generative, there's you know all the different families. So within generative AI and within LLMs, I haven't found one that's better than another. I I think Gemini sees more of the internet and that's just a feeling I have. I've read some things like that, but Gemini is not nearly as good in my setting for tracking all my previous conversations and synthesizing, you know, buying a piece of furniture for the house. Well, I remember you just painted that room cream, so you know, like pulling up historical conversations. U Chat GPT seems to be the best. And then, you know, Claude and Perplexity are both very good as well. I'm kind of the tip of the spear for our company, so I'm just trying them all and seeing what works. Jackie, what do you think? Uh >> Claude, I I think Claude has really become a very good writer in the past couple of months. I think that um Perplexity is where I turn to for deep research and I am consistently blown away by what it gives me. And Chad GBT is my, you know, my generalist. I need something quick, it's there. But if I want to go deep and if I want to get good, it's absolutely going to be Claude. Um I do like Notebook LLM. I've enjoyed some of the photo and video work. Nana Banana's been great with imagery. I mean, I'm not firing any graphic designers anytime soon because it's not even close to what they can do. Uh, but for me to tell them what I need and be able to show them what I'm thinking, it helps me coalesce my thoughts and then they are starting from there instead of starting from scratch. And I like that. >> I just did that with cover ideas for a new book I'm writing. And you know, I used chat GPT because they just integrated Acrobat into inside chat GPT. So it generated covers that looked like AI generated the covers. But I took them to our meeting with our publisher and it took 10 minutes instead of an hour to say this is the general idea. Now go humanize it and make it wonderful. And but again, that's internally facing gener general content, not externally facing. >> Dave, do you see differences between the various offerings? So, I'm using Gemini and Chat GBT uh most of the time, and I do use Notebook LM as well. I I really like that. I love the the podcast features. It's I I find it's great to to throw a bunch of stuff on a certain topic into there and then be able to to listen to that. I've also started to take advantage of my my downtime, like my driving time more. So, I'll I'll put a bunch of stuff into Notebook LM, ask prompt it for a certain kind of podcast recording, which then takes time to generate, but I've got the app on my phone. So, then later when I get in my car, I can open it up and it's usually ready by then and I can listen to that in the car. >> So, that topic that you want to explore, you'll throw throw in information and then let it create a version of it that's easily digested while you're driving. >> Exactly. like a 25minut, you know, podcast conversation between the two hosts that they have there. And so between Gemini and Chat GBT, I have to say honestly I prefer Chat GBT. Um, and like like I said before, I agree that if you give it something to work with, the results are usually much better. I was trying to give it the body of my entire history of emails that I've written for the last few years and then I was trying to prompt it to write emails on certain topics and it just didn't work. And so, you know, because I've been doing it so long and I've I've been, you know, writing so long, I mean, I can sit down and and make one in like 20 minutes and and I enjoy it. So, so at the end of the day, you know, when I realized the engagement was going down, I figured people probably weren't enjoying them as much as I used to when I was writing them myself, I said, you know what, I'm I'm just going to go back and do it myself. And I enjoy it. >> When you do it yourself at the end when you've produced it, do you ever throw it into um Notebook LM or or one of the others just to do a quick read and see if it can improve it? >> No. No. [laughter] I I reread it myself and I usually end up making some edits, but but I I've I've not, you know, gone through and iter it filtered it like that. I've done stuff like that before on other writing projects that are more substantial like presentations or uh or like uh slide decks for for training and things like that. So, I I've had that back and forth experience you describe. Well, we've had a number of clients, whether it's a school or a nonprofit or a church, where maybe they've got a a boardled situation where the board really makes a lot of directional decisions and leader, whether that's the CEO or the headmaster or senior pastor, uploads into whichever tool they're using as much as they can about every board member. And then they'll run their slide deck through the mocked up AIdriven board to see what are the questions I can anticipate, you know, what's negative Nancy going to say about this. And I' I've tried to do the same with my writing this time with the book. And I I'll do a chapter and I'll say, "Okay, the target for this book is, you know, the frustrated person who's tired all the time and wants to get ahead in life and they're 20 years old and they or 30 years old or whatever. what are they going to say they do connect with and don't in this chapter and that's been helpful. So it's not writing the text for me as much as taking the role of a critic in a very specific demographic I send which I would imagine marketers are already doing and then bettering my writing to fit that uh persona. >> I've used the personas before. So um I I I had mentioned that I created a a strategic advisor project for my company. So, one of the things I had Chad GPT do was to do, for example, a workup on a persona for Alan Weiss. He's a guy who's written a lot of books about consulting businesses. And there's a lot of content online about him. And so, it was able to pull together like a five-page report on, you know, things that Allan has said and his concepts and frameworks, etc. for consulting businesses. So that's loaded into that project so that when I'm discussing ideas with that project or or sometimes it will just volunteer, you know, Alan Weiss would probably say this about that and and so it's very interesting when you try to get it to to mimic certain characters that you go program it with. >> Well, we are just about out of time. My last use case that I will tell you about is uh I've taken to taking podcast transcripts and feeding them into chat GPT and asking it to rate my performance. And um you know everybody complains about how chat GPT is so positive and reaffirming and overly complimentary but doesn't bother me at all. [laughter] Well, you know, you really should go into the personalization settings because now in the past couple of months, it allows you to assign it a personality. So, it can be very direct, very affusive, very critical. And so, you want to tell it how you want to interact with it. And >> I want praise. >> I know you do. Um, I did not pick that choice. I have given it a list of 50 words that it's never allowed to use. I've finally gotten rid of the M dash and all the crazy formatting and emojis. You know, the more you work with it, the more you're going to be able to personalize and customize it so it stops being AI slop and starts being a useful tool. >> Well, I know you're all dying to hear how my performance gets rated. I promise to let you know as soon as I have a transcript. >> Yes, I do that for all my client calls. >> Interesting. And do you think it's changed the way you handle them? >> Oh, 100%. Absolutely. I am so much better. >> So, you're recording all your client calls? >> Yes. And they know that. >> Oh, absolutely. I mean, you see my notetaker right there in the notes. >> Yep. >> And do you feel that people are more or less open as a result of that? >> Well, based on the things they say, I think they have no concern in the world because I'd hate to see it if they were more open than that. >> Right. Right. Right. Okay. My thanks to David Barnett, Jackie Russo, and William Vanderblan. Thanks [clears throat] everybody for sharing. I really appreciate it. One thing before you go. Everything we do at 21 Hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together. If you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes, consider joining the conversation. You can do that by joining the 21 Hats sounding board, a Slack channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast. You can sign up for both by subscribing to [music] the Morning Report. If you have any questions, you can email me at lauren21hats.com. And if you get something out of this podcast or out of the Morning Report, please tell a friend, tell an enemy, tell every business owner you know. Your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us. Thank you. It means a lot. This episode was produced by another entrepreneur, Jess Stubberon, [music] founder of Blank Word Productions. Thanks for listening, everyone.